Mad Joy (24 page)

‘Are we going home?’ asked Andrew.

‘Soon. I just want to …’ I stood in the hallway and turned to the back of the house. ‘This way.’

We stopped by the back door, and I stared at it.

‘Come on, let’s go and see the garden!’ Andrew was pulling at me now, reaching for the door handle, having seen the sunlight through the panes of glass. It was a brass knob, gleaming in places, dull and mud-coloured at its base. The keyhole was empty now, but it was different in other ways, shrunken somehow, less grand and threatening. Andrew had reached up and was turning it. And I had reached up too – to an eye-level handle on a grand, grey, sinister door in my bid for freedom.

The nun was coming for the door and we stood back as she opened it from the garden.

‘Hello,’ she smiled, a picture of innocence (but I wasn’t fooled). ‘Are you lost?’

I looked at her pale cheeks marbled with delicate pink threads, her gentle grey eyes gazing expectantly – almost tenderly – at mother and son. I did not recognize her.

‘No. No –1 was wondering if I could … Is Sister Conceptua here?’

‘Sister Conceptua?’ She looked confused for a moment, and then thoughtful. ‘Wait here one moment. Won’t you sit down?’ She indicated two metal chairs next to the orchid display and I declined. Andrew went to sit down anyway, and lay down on both seats, because he could.

Very shortly the nun returned with another nun.

‘This is Sister Frances, and I forgot to introduce myself: Sister Agnes.’

She held out a dry, cool hand, and I felt obliged to shake it, and to repeat the procedure with Sister Frances. ‘Joy – Joy Buckleigh.’

‘And this must be your little boy! Oh, isn’t he a dear!’ Sister Frances was already moving herself delightedly towards the seats, but I got there first. I wasn’t taken in by any of it.

Andrew showed off a bit and started to shoot us all to get more attention. Sister Frances smiled at me shyly. ‘You wanted to know about Sister Conceptua?’

‘Yes. Is she still here?’

‘Are you a friend?’ She raised her eyebrows and smiled, almost defensively I thought, as if to say ‘I’m interrogating you but let’s pretend I’m not.’

I shook my head, aware from Andrew’s fidgeting that my time was limited. ‘No. I wanted to talk to her, that’s all. There’s something I wanted to say.’

Sister Frances and Sister Agnes looked briefly at each other. Sister Frances clasped her hands together and said: ‘I’m afraid Sister Conceptua left some years back.’

‘Most of the nuns have gone now,’ added Sister Agnes. ‘We’re only here in a pastoral role.’

‘And some practicalities.’

‘Oh yes! We do plenty of practical things too.’

‘But Sister Conceptua left before the others – she was very ill.’

‘Ill?’

‘She became very … her mind, you know.’

‘Mad?’ I asked.

The other nun nodded, smiling. But Sister Frances continued: ‘Let’s say … mental problems. I didn’t know her well, but … I think she was quite a force to be reckoned with.’

‘Where is she now?’

‘She was taken to Coney Hill in Gloucester – you know, the asylum? I believe she died there last year. I’m so sorry.’

‘Oh.’ To my utter amazement, I felt tears on my face, and my mouth was doing that ugly distorted thing it does when you try not to cry. Sister Frances took my hand in surprise, and the other nun tried to coax Andrew away from the plants whose leaves he was plucking and folding into ammunition.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said again.

‘No… No! It’s nothing. I would’ve liked to …’ What? Slap her face, tell her to see how
that
feels, slap her about a bit generally, stick her head down the toilet, pull her hair, strip her of everything – every last item of clothing – and laugh at her? Even now, when all the cards were in my favour, she had outdone me. Even in dying she had scored a little victory, given me the last stinging blow.

I sighed and reached for Andrew’s hand. The nuns scuttled around me as I went back into the rest room, and brought me some tea although I didn’t want it.

Howard stood up when he saw us, and swung Andrew up into the air. ‘You all right?’ he said to me. I nodded. ‘Because if you’re ready to go, there’s a chauffeur coming to pick us up in ten minutes.’

‘A chauffeur?’

‘Mr Tribbit is bringing his grocery van. I rang Mrs Bubb to let her know we found him. It was Mrs Tribbit who picked up the phone. They’re all there – practically the entire village,
searching
the grounds.’

Now I let myself look at him, because I could pass off the slight redness of eye as stemming from deep emotion at the collective concern for my son.

I noticed that Celia had disappeared. ‘Is Celia all right?’

‘She’s gone for an appointment upstairs.’

‘Will she be okay, do you think?’

Howard drew his hands over his face. ‘She’ll be a lot better now, I think. All that stuff about not being real.’ He screwed his face up in confusion. ‘I mean, we’re all real, aren’t we?’

‘Goodbye, Mabel!’ said Andrew, waving to her dramatically.

‘Goodbye!’ said Mabel, jumping up. ‘And goodbye, Your Highness, so pleased you could come.’

‘Goodbye, Mabel, it’s been a pleasure.’ Howard gave a little royal wave. ‘I just happened to be in the area.’

‘And goodbye, Mr Man,’ said Andrew, lifting the
Beano
. ‘Thank you for singing to me.’

‘Oh, you off, little man?’ I heard him say. And as I turned back to take Andrew’s hand I saw Mr Man looking at Andrew, his face lit up with smiles, and then looking at me, his little head cocked to one side in exactly the same way it had been when he offered me the lavender. When our eyes met I had to slide mine away. I couldn’t bear to see the look of recognition, that instant of thwarted delight as I turned away.

Moments ago I had stood in the hallway feeling brave and ready to face my demons. Now I stood in the same spot feeling shabby and cowardly. We bid goodbye to the nuns, and they stood in the doorway and waved us off like two friendly but anxious-faced guinea pigs peeking out of their hutch.

We walked together down the drive, the three of us holding hands in a row. Andrew, who walked in the middle, turned round to wave. I turned back too, and saw, to my horror, a face at the front window. His mouth was opening and closing. I couldn’t tell if he was singing ‘Daisy, Daisy’ or shouting it.

I carried on without looking back. Just kept on walking.

There was a letter, of course. Howard handed it to me with such painful apology that I touched his arm.

It was, at least, unopened.

I began to cling to people, Gracie in particular. I had this ridiculous notion that she would go off with Howard and want nothing more to do with me. And yet it was the one thing I most wanted for her in all the world. Poor Gracie didn’t know when she was interfering and when she was needed. She didn’t know what to do with me any more than I knew what to do with myself. I wanted to know what she was doing all the time, and became terrified she would leave me.

And the children … I clung to them for solace at night-time. One night I would sleep with Jill, the next with Andrew. I would close myself around their dear, perfect bodies, breathe in the sweetness of their baby soft hair, and cry silently with love for them. Their little sighs and murmurings would wake me – alert as a cat – when they had bad dreams. Then I would stroke their dimpled hands and their marshmallow arms, and wonder what sort of mother could give away these precious gifts.

Once Andrew asked me to sing him ‘Bright Moon’.

‘I don’t know that one.’

‘Yes, you do. Mr Man sang it to me. Bright moon on Charlie Chaplin … and baggy trousers. You hum it sometimes.’

‘Oh, that one.’ So I sang it.

Sidney had wrapped himself around me like this, had felt my dimples and my night murmurings. We would have learnt each other’s movements, rolled over together like clockwork. Sidney had had a warm sleep companion, and then suddenly, without warning, a cold empty bed.

I couldn’t name my misery. I would sit and weep for whole mornings without knowing why. I would turn the wireless off for some peace and quiet, and then feel injured because the newscaster had stopped speaking to me in mid-sentence. I thought I overheard Howard say, ‘Don’t tell Joy’ again on the phone, or ‘Don’t tell her yet.’ I felt negligent, feeble, and I had the ominous sense that there was no good left in the world, and that no one was safe. The sound of a bird squawking could make me jump and break out in a sweat. I was terrorized at the thought of Andrew or Jill cutting themselves with a knife, spilling hot tea over themselves, being spat at by the fire, not seeing a barbed wire fence in time, catching their fingers in a door, playing with matches, stroking a mad dog or choking on apple skin. And yet I couldn’t bring myself to sing to either of them with any cheer in my voice, or tell them a story that was not a glum monotone. I could hold them very close – so tight that Jill’s arms hurt and she wanted to wriggle free – but I couldn’t give them the tenderness owed to two small children whose accidental death was just around the corner.

I was convinced my disquiet would end when James came home, but James would not be back until the winter if he was lucky. As the months went by, however, I grew more and more
introverted. I found myself staring out of windows for
half-hours
at a time, or unable to get up in the mornings and face the day.

In November 1945 the air smelt of winter: cold lungfuls bereft of pollen but with a hint of woodsmoke. The trees grew thin and ragged, fluttering their last remaining leaves like tiny items of washing on a line. Mist turned the hills into looming clouds. The blackberries shrivelled on the hedgerows, dry and rotten, and everything seemed attached to something else by strands of cobweb. I took the children into the village for a walk. The walk was for my benefit: Jill and Andrew sat at each end of the pram, even though Andrew was strictly far too big for it.

I was making my way to the corner by the memorial cross – because that was where the fish van stopped on Fridays – when something very queer happened. Suddenly I became aware of two huge sheep blocking the pavement up ahead. They were making their way towards us, slowly at first, but then at quite a sinister trot.

They came right up to the pram, and one of them leapt up on her hind legs and put her trotters on the side. Jill screamed. Andrew giggled. I tried to shoo them away. There was no one around at that moment, and I found my pulse racing in silly terror. They were only sheep, and with a couple of big shoves they trundled back down the street and stood looking hurt and bewildered by the green.

I remembered then that Miss Wallock had died last year, and these were probably two of her old lambs: they’d seen the pram and thought she’d come back for them. They stood longingly by as I purchased four tails of cod, occasionally putting one hoof tentatively forward as if to make another run at the pram, then thinking the better of it as I caught their eye.

I felt oddly moved by those two old sheep, lost without their
dear Miss Wallock, but with no real place in the sheep world after so much Wallock-love.

I felt increasingly isolated and introverted. I couldn’t seek advice from the one person who might have helped me, because I felt the burden of Gracie’s sacrifice for me. If I asked one more thing of her it would plunge me into a deeper self-loathing. One evening, when Howard was painting a cluster of orange rowanberries in the drawing room and I was watering the plants, I asked him quite suddenly, ‘Am I mad?’

He looked up briefly, and then stroked his fine paintbrush over a square of watercolour in a metal tin. I supposed it was too much to ask of him to talk about emotions. One whiff of feeling and the Englishman retreated swiftly into his
impenetrable
shell. But I was wrong. Howard was just biding his time. It seemed my madness or lack of it was not as clear cut as I had hoped.

‘Well,’ he said, not looking up, ‘I suppose guilt and regret have their uses in the short term …’ He put his brush into a jar of water, and we both watched as the orange colour streamed into it like a rescue flare. I waited, not at all sure he would continue. ‘But long term, they’re absolutely useless. They’ll destroy you if you let them.’

He squeezed the water out of the brush and refined the tip. I waited, but there was nothing more.

‘So … am I mad, do you think?’

I watched as he painted another whole rowanberry,
painstakingly
dipping and stroking and blotting. I’d given up waiting for a reply when he said:

‘When you’re in the trenches, you have to stay alert. If you let yourself sink back, the rats’ll get you.’

I closed my eyes in exasperation. This was so typical of Howard: one hint of emotion and he retreated into trench
warfare. I sprinkled the remaining water on a rubber plant and went towards the door.

‘Stay alert,’ he said to my back.

I turned around to face him. ‘Alert to what?’

He looked up from his work and in a rare moment of eye-
to-eye
contact he said, ‘Loveliness. Lovely things …’ He looked awkwardly at his rowanberries. ‘Moments of joy.’

And that was it. His head was down over his work, and I was left, mouth ajar in the doorway.